Thursday, June 20, 2013

No aid to Syria!

Sadly,
in my book, Forging
Swords into Plows, I predicted the deteriorating situation now occurring in
both Afghanistan and Iraq. In Chapter 5, I argued that after the U.S. withdrew
from Iraq, violence between Sunnis and Shiites would resume and that Iraq would
move toward either a dictatorship (probably under the current prime minister,
al-Maliki) or fragment into three separate nations. In Chapter 6, I explain that
Afghanistan has never had an effective central government, why Afghans widely
regard their current leader, Hamid Karzai, as an American stooge, and that NATO
nation building efforts have failed.

Nothing
that has happened in the six months since I finished the book has caused me to
alter my predictions.

Indeed,
Iraq and Afghanistan are the two best arguments for the United States and other
nations staying out of the current problems in Syria. The approximately 90,000
dead are the result of unjustifiable killings by the Syrian government, its
Hezbollah allies, and the Sunni rebels, many of whom are radical Islamists.

Sending
small arms to the Syrian rebels will not reverse the government's regaining the
upper hand. Sending small arms to the Syrian rebels, as President Obama has
directed, will increase the killing and postpone any eventual progress toward a
more stable, less violent Syria. Sending small arms to the Syrian rebels, if
intended to keep Israel from taking more aggressive action against Syria, will
not win us friends on either side. The rebels know that this aid will not be
decisive and see it as a sham. Conversely, Assad and Hezbollah will see the aid
as a move against them.

Unfortunately,
there is no good option for a third party solution to Syria's problems. If the
U.S. (or other nations) side with Syria's government, that strengthens Iran's
position in the Middle East. This would further destabilize Iraq and perhaps
embolden Hezbollah to reach for more power in Lebanon and to become more
aggressive and intransigent in its dealings with Israel. Alternatively, if the
U.S. (or other nations) tilts toward the rebels, this probably prolongs the
conflict, causing more death and destruction. If, in the unlikely event, the
rebels prevail, then Syria will probably become another dysfunctional nation,
vulnerable to takeover by Islamists.

Those
who would help another – whether an individual caregiver or a nation committed
to developing stable democracies (a laudatory goal!) – must learn that help is
not always possible. Even Jesus experienced this. When a rich young man desired
to learn the path to perfection and Jesus replied that he must sell all of his
possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, the man said nothing, but turned
and walked away. The New Testament does not mention what happened to him.
Contrary to the romanticism of some interpreters, I suspect that the young man
found wealth's grip on his heart, at least for many years, too strong to break.

The
other important lesson from what's happening in Syria is that the conflict
graphically and tragically illustrates the impotence of a people equipped with
small arms against even a third rate military force. Defenders of the Second
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution right to bear arms who maintain that
Americans owning weapons constitutes a bastion against tyranny would do well to
study events in Syria and Egypt. In Syria, rifles have proven no match more
tanks, artillery, air power, etc. More importantly, in Egypt, the word has
proven mightier than the sword. Networking through social media, protesters
overthrew a repressive regime without tens of thousands dying. Government data
collection and mining are a greater threat to liberty than are laws that
restrict the right to own guns.